Sunday, September 17, 2017

EVOLUTION OF IMAGES

EVOLUTION OF IMAGES - The 30,000 year old figurative paintings discovered in the Chauvet cave date back to the Paleolithic age.  The art materials used were sticks, rocks, hand prints, mud, charcoal and red ochre. Fast forward to the year 1665 to peek into Johannes Vermeer’s art studio. His painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring, looks like it might have been shot with a modern camera. His painting materials, techniques and rumored use of a camera obscura have been lost to history. Prior to the 1800’s, photographic attempts resulted in a crude finished product. That changed in 1839 with the Daguerreotype. Whereby a sheet of silver-plated copper was treated, exposed to light inside a camera, subjected to mercury vapor and sealed in a glass case. In 1888, the next evolution in stills was ushered in by the Kodak camera. Now, anyone could snap a photo and pay the company to process the images. First in black and white, then soon afterward in color Kodachrome film. Moving images, AKA movies, were a revolution of entertainment in the silent film era, from roughly 1895 to 1930. The Kinetograph was one of the first, watched through a peephole on top of the device. The word ‘film’ comes from a strip of celluloid material with a series of still shots that run through the projector, displayed on a movie screen with a reflective coating in a darkened movie theater. By the time the Great Depression came about ‘talkies’--otherwise known as sound films--became the standard in American entertainment. Black and white gave way to color but not entirely. The Wizard of Oz was filmed in Technicolor with some scenes shot in black and white. Film Noir employed severe angular shadows juxtaposed against razor sharp light to set a stark mood. Broadcast television was undergoing its own evolutionary process. NBC transmitted a pioneering broadcast in 1941 but earlier crude experimental iterations came earlier. At the time a cathode ray tube captured a moving image by interpreting a signal from a series of lines picked up by the set. NBC was also the first network to provide a color television signal as early as 1953. But the digital age changed everything--for still as well as moving images--beginning in the 1990’s due to computer capabilities. Still images came first, followed by televisions, monitors and portable hand held screens. By 2009 older analog TV systems were obsolete. Not long afterward, high definition televisions and displays became available. Most display screens today rely on LCD technology. Variations on this include 4K Ultra HD, OLED, curved monitors, VR goggles and even transparent monitors. Images are displayed on smart phones, static displays such as the Kindle Paperwhite, and on tablets including the Samsung Note. Images have come a long way in 30,000 years. I wonder what will come next, in the evolution of images? 













7 comments:

  1. I find it interesting the choice of images that people want to remember. Is it a moment or a person. Sometimes the subject is as interesting as the reason behind it

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  2. Great to know about the progress made in images.. I have to look at the Girl with the earring painting again.

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  3. Images helped us decode an ancient past and even to this day images become living puzzles.

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  4. Those cave drawings are incredible! The skill of some artists is almost unbelievable. But now even photography is a skill to wonder over.

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  5. Images can be a powerful tool for social change as well as advertising.

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  6. The cave paintings are marvelous; as good as any image today. Your history is interesting and informative.

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